Davis playwright takes unflinching look at U.S. drone warfare in Ovation Stage world premiere
SACRAMENTO, California—Two U.S. Air Force drone pilots with diametrically opposed views face off in a
conflict fraught with deadly worldwide ramifications, in a powerful new play
making its world premiere July 30 at Ovation Stage.

Al and Homer: The Drone Play, by Davis poet, novelist and new
playwright Jerry Fishman, will run through Aug. 21 at the R25 Arts Complex
in midtown Sacramento. Penny Kline, Ovation Stage founder, veteran play
director and longtime presence in Sacramento-area community theater, is director and producer.
“From my very first reading of Al and Homer: The Drone Play, I knew
it was a story that had to be told,” Kline said. “It is a relevant story reflecting
the spirit of our times and the painfully polarized state of American life.

In the play, two young pilots, Al and Homer, work grudgingly side by
side in an Air Force bunker outside Las Vegas, Nevada, where they guide
missile-armed Predator drones to countries on the other side of the world,
headed for terrorist targets detected by satellites and monitored in unseen
command centers. The frequent imprecision of the emerging drone
technology combines with human error and a military culture of bravado
to create a recipe ripe for tragedy, with unlikely bedfellows Al and Homer
at the center, pitted against each other.

Playwright Fishman, 82, retired in 2011 after teaching English composition and critical thinking for
more than 30 years at Sacramento City College and for several years at Woodland Community College
and Sierra College.
MARK THESE DATES!
July 30: Opening night includes ice
cream social hosted by Sacramento
Area Regional Theatre Alliance
July 31: Talkback with playwright
Jerry Fishman after performance
Aug. 6: Millitary members and
veterans pay only $10 ($5 discount)
In recent years, Fishman’s poems have appeared online at Camel Saloon and Surrealist Star Clustered
Illuminations and in print in The Davis Anthology of Poetry, Yolo Crow, Off the Coast, Garbanzo Literary
Journal and Sacramento Voices. He also has written two novels, How Nixon Taught America to Do the Kent
State Mambo, about the 1970 National Guard killing of four university students, and 2059, a futuristic story of cyborgs in a deflating capitalist economy. Although he had experimented with playwriting just once before, Fishman decided that theater was the most appropriate vehicle for the story he wanted to tell.
“Al and Homer: The Drone Play grew out of my feelings about the drone warfare we pursue in this
country,” he said. “I see it as unjust, immoral and dehumanizing, and I wanted to shine a light on that through the personal lens of two very different guys who are at war with each other.”

Kline has known Fishman since 1973, when she was a student in his English class at Sacramento City
College. The two ran into each other again at a Sacramento Poetry Center reading in 2013, when Fishman told her he was writing a play. Intrigued, she agreed in March 2016 to collaborate with him to bring his completed script to life at Ovation Stage. Al and Homer: The Drone Play marks the 15th play Kline has produced for Ovation Stage, an independent company she founded in 2012. Kline said Fishman’s play fits well with Ovation’s mission to present stories that are as timely and thought-provoking as they are engaging and entertaining.

Al and Homer: The Drone Play features Terry Randolph of Natomas as Al and Brent Dirksen of Lodi as
Homer. The cast also includes Lynnette Blaney of Antelope, Aviv Hannan of Carmichael, David Kamminga of
Clarksburg and Janet Motenko of Sacramento.